Certain pet medications, such as hairball treatment medications for cats, are commonly available. Hairball treatment medications in particular typically are in the form of emulsions of either mineral oil (liquid petrolatum) or petroleum jelly (white petrolatum). Malt extract (malt syrup) is typically used as a palatant and also is the base from which the emulsion is formed. Depending on the particular type of product, acacia gum (gum arabic), lecithin, fatty acids and glyceride are used as the emulsifiers. Some products also include vitamin supplements and possibly also preservatives to control mold growth.
Some known hairball treatment products are in gel form and are packaged in a tube. The pet's owner administers the gel by squeezing the desired amount of the gel onto the cat's front paws or nose, with the hope that the cat will then lick and ingest the gel. An alternative way of administering this type of tube packaged product is to squeeze a ribbon forming the desired amount of gel onto one's fingers and feeding the gel to the cat.
Another known hairball treatment is packaged in a stick form. In this alternative approach, the product is adapted to be administered by turning a dial on the stick to cause a desired amount of the product to be exposed. The product can then be rubbed on the cat's paws, rubbed on one's finger and fed to the cat, or simply given to the cat to lick directly from the stick.
In all of these various known hairball treatment products, the administration of the hairball treatment is rather messy and may not always be effective from the standpoint of the cat actually ingesting the medication.
In light of the foregoing, a need exists for a different way of administering pet medicaments, such as hairball treatment formulas, that does not suffer from the same disadvantages and drawbacks as other known products.
A need also exists for a method of producing such a product in a way that lends itself to high speed, high output production so that production of the product on a commercial scale is possible.
It would also be desirable to provide an edible pet product containing edible foods other than pet medicaments, as well as an apparatus and method for making such a product.